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Sept. 24, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
56:46
Impeachment Is On The Table | Ep. 867
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Democrats push for impeachment as President Trump denies he asked for dirt.
President Trump heads to the UN to confront Iran.
And climate change passions run high while solutions run low.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Ah, much news to get to today.
A lot of it coming from the United Nations, which is indeed a horrible place.
It is the most eyesleeve international politics, a hive of scum and villainy.
And the fact is that I'm not in favor of eminent domain in the UN as a government building.
But if President Trump were to declare for any reason, including corrupt reasons, that the United Nations building ought to be Pursued by the Trump Corporation under eminent domain, torn down and replaced with the Trump Tower, I'd be in favor of it.
I mean, frankly, if they want to turn it into a nuclear waste depository, I'm in favor of it.
You will see why today as we discuss all of the myriad wonderful activities happening at the UN.
We'll get to that in just a little bit.
But first, President Trump Continues to dig a hole.
And the hole continues to be dug.
And the first rule of holes, of course, is to stop digging.
Well, yesterday, President Trump sort of went back and forth and back and forth on these Ukraine allegations.
So, just to review, to bring you up to date, when last we left our riveting story on this episode of Downton Abbey.
The President of the United States had a call with Ukraine.
The call with Ukraine involved the President asking the government of Ukraine to look into investigating and prosecuting Hunter Biden and or Joe Biden for a relationship that Hunter Biden had in 2016 with a company called Burisma, which is an oil and gas company in Ukraine.
And let's be frank about this.
The only reason Hunter Biden had this slot at Burisma is because his daddy is Joe Biden, because Hunter Biden has never actually earned a job.
Just a few months earlier, he had been kicked out of the Navy for drug use.
I mean, there had been serious problems with Hunter Biden, and yet he was getting these very rich jobs.
So he gets this job over at Burisma, and the prosecutor, there's a prosecutor named Shokin over in Ukraine, he starts looking into this.
Well, it turns out this guy Shokin also had a significant record of corruption.
So Joe Biden, who's vice president at the time, is openly calling on the government of Ukraine to fire this prosecutor.
Now, the question is, was he calling on Ukraine to fire the prosecutor because the prosecutor was looking into the corporation where his son was?
Or was Biden doing that because, in general, That prosecutor was corrupt.
Now Biden maintains the latter.
And he was openly bragging about pressuring Ukraine by threatening to withhold American aid to Ukraine.
A billion dollars in US loan guarantees, in fact.
So that is what set President Trump off.
President Trump always wants everybody investigated, as we mentioned yesterday on the program.
This is his thing.
Every other tweet from President Trump is about how someone should investigate Netflix for the Obama deal.
Someone should investigate Saturday Night Live for the FCC.
Somebody should investigate my underwear.
President Trump constantly wants investigations of people.
And so him getting on the line with someone being like, can you investigate something?
That's not necessarily a violation of law.
It's just the president being the president, which is not good.
You don't want the president of the United States talking to foreign leaders and asking them to investigate American citizens as a general rule.
But it's also a manner of degree rather than a difference in kind with past activities by prominent politicians.
As we've mentioned over the past week, in 2016 Hillary Clinton explicitly worked with the Ukrainian government, the DNC explicitly worked with the Ukrainian government at the Ukrainian embassy to try and dig up dirt on Paul Manafort, who was then Donald Trump's campaign manager because Manafort was allegedly working with the Russians and with the former Ukrainian regime of Viktor Yanukovych.
So that was Hillary Clinton engaging in that sort of politics.
Barack Obama in the lead up to 2012 was caught on a hot mic telling Dmitry Medvedev, who was a front man for Vladimir Putin, that he was going to offer Putin and Russia flexibility in exchange for Russia sort of backing off before the election.
So Trump saying to Ukraine, it'd be great if you could investigate Biden.
It's a difference in degree, not a difference in kind.
Now what would make it a difference in kind is if this was connected to taxpayer dollars.
Meaning that if Donald Trump had said to Ukraine, I'm withholding your military aid unless you investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, that would be an impeachable offense.
That would be a crime.
It would be bribery.
It would look a lot like what Trump is accusing Biden of.
Because Trump is accusing Biden of essentially trying to bribe the government of Ukraine to get rid of a prosecutor looking into his son.
Now, in that particular case, Biden has claimed, and the evidence seems to be on his side, that Shokin, the prosecutor, was deeply corrupt, that he was ousted for corruption, and that the fact that this prosecutor was looking into Biden's son was sort of just coincidental.
And that may make you suspicious, but the fact is that when you have a lot of interlocking parts, and when you have a son who is working internationally in politics, and using your name to get around, there are going to be some conflicts of interest.
Or at least apparent conflicts of interest.
So Biden's claim looks a lot like Trump's claim today.
So Trump is saying, listen, now I had withheld Ukrainian aid, but the reason I was holding Ukrainian aid is because I was in general concerned about corruption in Ukraine, and then finally those fears were quelled, and then I gave the aid.
But it didn't have to do specifically with them investigating Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.
Now, the case in favor of that is that Ukraine did not investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, and Trump unlocked the aid.
And he unlocked the aid before any of this story broke.
So if it was an explicit quid pro quo, or even an implicit quid pro quo, you would expect that Trump would not have released the aid.
So that is going to be his defense here.
But the fact that the aid was being discussed at the same time that Trump was pressing the Ukrainian president to investigate his chief political opponent domestically, that is leading to a lot of, I think, well-founded suspicions.
Just as the right is suspicious that Joe Biden was using his leverage In order to knock off a prosecutor in Ukraine in favor of his son, the left is suspicious for exactly the same reasons that Trump was threatening to withhold military aid from Ukraine in pursuit of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.
So it's almost exactly parallel.
Like really, almost exactly parallel.
So the AP reported yesterday, President Donald Trump ordered his staff to freeze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine a few days before a phone call in which he pressured the Eastern European nation's leader to investigate the family of political rival Joe Biden, a revelation that comes as more Democrats move toward impeachment proceedings.
Now, people are going to look at the timing here, and they're going to say the timing is really suspicious.
And the timing is suspicious.
I mean, I'm not going to sugarcoat the facts.
Of course it's suspicious.
If the president says, let's withhold aid to Ukraine, and then he gets on the line with Ukraine, and the first thing he says is, Can you investigate my political opponent, guys?
But the fact is that Ukraine probably was not top of mind for Trump, right?
If you're his defense lawyer, what you're going to argue is Ukraine, like you think Trump walks around thinking about Ukraine all day?
And the fact is that probably somebody came to him and said, should we give aid to Ukraine?
And he was like, nah, I'm not, let's wait to see if they're corrupt.
And then on the phone call, he just does what Trump does, right?
He just freewheels and he talks about Biden and all this stuff.
And then, without getting any commitment from the Ukrainians to go after Biden or Hunter Biden, then he releases the aid.
So if there's a quid pro quo, then where's the quo?
Right?
If the idea is that he is giving them aid in exchange for X, where is the X?
Because the X never materialized.
We'll get to more of this in just one second.
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Okay, so the AP reports that Trump, in remarks to reporters at the UN on Tuesday, confirmed that he held up the aid, but he said he did so to fight corruption and urge European nations to share in helping out Ukraine.
He said, as far as withholding funds, those funds were paid.
They were fully paid.
Okay, that's true.
He says, my complaint has always been, and I'd withhold it again, and I'll continue to withhold until such time as Europe and other nations contribute to Ukraine.
Now that obviously does fit with Trump's broader overall pattern of saying things like people aren't paying their fair share in NATO, and so we might withhold aid until NATO nations start paying more for their own defense.
He suggested that Germany and France put in money.
And then he used the moment to again suggest the Biden family inappropriately benefited from their ties to Ukraine.
So, President Trump, you know, he went off on the press over all of this.
He was over at the United Nations, and he took the time to rip into, not Fredo, Chris Cuomo on CNN for his coverage.
I don't watch CNN because it's fake news, but I watched Rudy take apart Fredo.
Fredo's performance was incompetent.
Rudy took him apart.
The press doesn't give him credit because they take little tiny snippets Wherever Rudy was a little bit... If he mispronounces a word, they'll show that.
They won't show the whole.
Rudy Giuliani took Fredo to the cleaners.
Okay, and he's talking about the exchange between Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, and not Fredo, we won't call him Fredo, apparently it's a racial slur, not Fredo, Chris Cuomo, over on CNN in exchange in which Rudy Giuliani sort of reversed himself and admitted within 30 seconds that he had actually, that Trump had actually spoken with the Ukrainian president about the possible prosecution of Joe Biden.
So a little bit more information on this withholding aid issue, because again, the quid pro quo is the criminal question here.
So according to the Washington Post, President Trump And this would be Karen Demirjian, Josh Dowsey, Ellen Nakashima, and Carol Lennig on it, so you can see that they're taking this pretty seriously, putting four reporters on the story.
President Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to hold back almost $400 million in military aid for Ukraine, at least a week before a phone call in which Trump is said to have pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate the son of former VP Joe Biden, according to three senior administration officials.
Officials at the Office of Management and Budget relayed Trump's order to the State Department and the Pentagon during an interagency meeting in mid-July.
According to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, they explained that the president had concerns and wanted to analyze whether the money needed to be spent at all.
Administration officials were instructed to tell lawmakers the delays were part of an interagency process but give them no additional information, a pattern that continued for nearly two months until the White House released the funds on the night of September 11th.
So now the Washington Post is reporting something that looks like they're trying to portray this as a cover-up, right?
I mean, that is obviously what they're saying.
That they're trying to say it wasn't solely up to Trump.
It was an interagency process and all the rest, which would be suspicious.
I mean, frankly, if the president was saying I want to withhold the aid, but let's call it an interagency process.
That would be bad.
All of this would be bad.
Trump's order to withhold aid to Ukraine a week before his July 25th call with Zelensky is likely to raise questions about the motivation for his decision and fuel suspicions on Capitol Hill that Trump sought to leverage congressionally approved aid to damage a political rival.
Now, Kellyanne Conway, spokesperson for the White House, she was on TV this morning and she confirmed that President Trump did withhold the money from Ukraine, but she maintains that it had to do with generalized corruption in Ukraine and not having to do with exerting leverage over Ukraine to go after Biden.
The Washington Post had a broken story yesterday afternoon that said that the president told Mick Mulvaney to hold the money, $391 million in Ukrainian military aid, before he talked to the president, the new president of Ukraine.
Is that how you believe it all happened?
Yes, the president in terms of the president wanted to talk to him first, make sure that this person who the new president who won in the landslide on the anti-corruption agenda was actually going to execute on that and keep the promises of his presidential elective platform.
OK, well, the left is going to say, well, and the way that Trump achieved his confirmation that this was an anti-corruption platform is by getting Zelensky to pledge to prosecute Biden.
But Zelensky didn't do that.
So here's the problem with that particular narrative, at least so far as we know, given the information.
The Ukrainian president has completely denied that he gave Trump the okay.
So in other words, he never said to Trump, according to the Ukrainian president Zelensky, that he was going to prosecute Biden.
So if the logic is Trump said Trump withholds aid for a week, and then he has a call with Zelensky to determine whether he is anti-corruption, but secretly to determine whether he'll go after Biden.
And then he says, You know, I want to make sure you're not corrupt, but in order for me to determine that, are you prosecuting by any chance Joe Biden?
And then Zelensky says yes, and then Trump releases the aid.
That looks like quid pro quo.
But apparently Zelensky said no.
Apparently Zelensky is like, no, Mr. President, no.
And Trump was like, okay, well, I guess you're not corrupt.
Here's the money.
So that doesn't look exactly like the kind of quid pro quo that we are talking about.
Again, I'm just operating off the evidence that I've been given.
If the evidence changes, then I will change my opinion.
But that's the evidence that is in place right now.
Republican senators on the Senate Appropriations Committee said September 12th that the aid to Ukraine had been held up while the Trump administration explored whether Zelensky, the country's new president, was pro-Russian or pro-Western.
They said the White House decided to release the aid after Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois threatened to freeze $5 billion in Pentagon funding for next year unless the money for 2019 was distributed.
Okay, so now what Democrats are going to claim is that Trump didn't actually want to release the aid, that he wanted to continue holding it over Ukraine, and it was only Dick Durbin threatening a larger funding freeze for the Pentagon that caused Trump to let it go.
In other words, there are two plausible narratives.
And we don't know the answer to this yet, which is why I'm sure there will be a congressional investigation.
And frankly, there should be.
Frankly, there should be.
I, as an American, want more information on what happened here.
I do not want the President of the United States of either party threatening to withhold aid to countries based on them investigating domestic political opponents.
That would be wrong.
It would be impeachable.
It would be a crime.
But we don't know that happened yet.
And as I say, There are two alternative versions of the timeline being presented.
The timeline presented by the Trump administration says, we are considering Ukrainian aid.
Trump spoke to Zelensky.
Zelensky made no guarantee that he would go after Biden, and in fact didn't say that he would go after Biden.
In fact, he said he wouldn't, presumably.
And then we released the aid.
So that's not a quid pro quo.
And on the left, they would say, well, the only reason you released the aid is you did so in spite of the fact that you didn't want to.
You wanted to hold it over Zelensky, but Dick Durbin made trouble for you, and so you decided to release the aid.
One senior administration official said Monday that Trump's decision to hold back the funds was based on his concerns about there being a lot of corruption in Ukraine, and that the determination to release the money was motivated by the fiscal year's looming close on September 30th.
So, the Trump administration making an alternative case.
We didn't do it because of Dick Durbin.
It's because all of the money has to be released by September 30th.
We had to give it an up or a down, and so we gave it an up.
There is concern within the administration that if they did not spend the money, they would run afoul of the law, the official said, noting that eventually, Trump did give the OMB's acting director, Russell Vought, permission to release the money.
The official emphatically denied there was any link between blocking the aid and pressing Zelensky into investigating the Biden, stating it had nothing to do with a quid pro quo.
Well, that is the key line.
So the actual source, the actual source for the Washington Post, or at least one of their key sources, is openly saying this was not a quid pro quo.
But Democrats are pushing forward anyway.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, he is, you know, obviously pushing back with the narrative that the Trump administration is providing him.
Listen, I mean, he should know, and McConnell obviously should know something about the spending of this money, considering that the Senate did have oversight of the spending of this money.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, said yesterday that it's regrettable that Chuck Schumer is politicizing this issue.
I've been disappointed to see our colleague, the Democratic leader, choose to politicize the committee's ongoing efforts.
with respect to a recent whistleblower allegation, the specific subject of which is still unknown.
I believe it's extremely important that their work be handled in a secure setting with adequate protections in a bipartisan fashion.
It is regrettable that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff and Senator Schumer have chosen to politicize the issue.
Okay, well, the Democrats are responding by saying, "Well, it doesn't even matter." Now they're shifting the goalposts.
The goalpost was until five seconds ago.
Adam Schiff saying, was there a quid pro quo?
Now the Democrats are shifting the goalposts saying, Even if there was no quid pro quo, Trump even asking is a method of quid pro quo.
So Senator Chris Murphy says, I don't think it really matters whether the president explicitly told the Ukrainians they wouldn't get their security aid if they didn't interfere in the 2020 elections.
There's an implicit threat in every demand that a United States president makes of a foreign power.
That foreign country knows that if they don't do it, there are likely to be consequences.
Well, that's too broad.
That's too broad.
Because there's a difference between a quid pro quo using American taxpayer dollars and a head of state asking another head of state for an official action.
You may not like him asking for the official action, but head of states do this a lot and they do it with domestic political considerations in mind.
President Obama was asking the Iranians, basically, for an Iranian nuclear deal in advance of the 2016 election for political reasons domestically, as well as in terms of foreign policies.
That's too broad an argument from Senator Murphy, although I do sympathize with the general sentiment that when a president exerts pressure, he should be very careful, which is why I think there is a difference between what Trump did being bad and what he did being criminal.
I think it's bad.
I don't think he should be asking Ukraine to investigate Biden.
If Ukraine wants to investigate Biden, they can investigate Biden.
But, that's not criminal, and that's really the standard for impeachable offenses or getting rid of Trump or anything like that.
Okay, we'll get to more of this in just one second because Democrats are ramping up the impeachment talk.
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Okay.
Mike Pence came out after all of this and he says, okay, well, you guys keep talking quid pro quo.
Well, how about the Biden quid pro quo?
And again, herein lies the great parallel between what Biden is suspected of doing by Republicans and what Trump is suspected of doing by Democrats.
And so far, there's no evidence that Biden actually engaged in a corrupt quid pro quo with the Ukrainian government.
And so far, there is no actual evidence that Trump engaged in a corrupt quid pro quo with Ukraine.
It just looks real bad.
Which, you know, as I get older, this seems to be the nature of politics.
Just things look bad all the time.
And most of the time, they're not as bad as they look, but they look really ugly in the moment, which is why good politicians try to avoid this sort of stuff.
Here's Mike Pence pointing out, guys, I mean, if you're talking quid pro quo, then you actually do have to talk about Joe Biden, who is suspected of doing exactly the same thing.
You are now accusing, I mean, like exactly the same thing, withholding aid to Ukraine in exchange for a personal benefit.
That is exactly the accusation Trump is making of Biden and the exact accusation that Democrats are making of Trump.
So far, there's insufficient evidence for either charge.
Here's Mike Pence, though, trying to turn this on its head and go after Joe Biden.
He had a quid pro quo.
He said to Ukrainian officials that you will not get over a billion dollars in American aid unless you fire a prosecutor who just happened to be investigating a company that Vice President Biden's son was on the very board of.
Making a lot of money.
Apparently with no background in oil, gas, or energy.
The American people have a right to know.
Okay, so again, that's the allegation that Republicans are making of Biden, and the evidence is thus far insufficient.
And it is the accusation that Democrats are making of Trump, and thus far the evidence is insufficient.
Now, Chris Murphy, Who is indeed a motivated actor is claiming that the Ukrainians came away with the impression that there was a requested quid pro quo.
So Murphy, who spoke with Zelensky, this is according to the Washington Post, during an early September visit to Ukraine, said on Monday that the Ukrainian president directly expressed concerns at their meeting that the aid that was being cut off to Ukraine by the president was a consequence of his unwillingness to launch an investigation into the Bidens.
But that is not what Zelensky has said publicly.
Zelensky has not said that publicly.
There's also been some talk today that former National Security Advisor John Bolton wanted to release the money to Ukraine because he thought it would help the country while curtailing Russian aggression.
But Trump has said he was primarily concerned with corruption.
Now, again, that may be smoke that turns out to be nothing, meaning that Bolton I mean, I know John Bolton.
Of course John Bolton wanted to release the aid to the Ukrainians.
John Bolton is extraordinarily anti-Russian.
He sees that the Ukrainian government needs to resist Russian-backed militias in places like Crimea, as well as in the southeast of the country.
And the fact is that If Donald Trump had serious corruption concerns about Ukraine, he would withhold that.
I mean, there was open... John Bolton got fired, right?
I mean, so there was open conflict between Bolton and Trump over a wide variety of Bolton's hawkish issues.
That does not speak directly to the question of corruption.
Trump keeps telling reporters the same thing.
He said, it's very important to talk about corruption.
If you don't talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country you think is corrupt?
Besides Bolton, several other administration officials told the Washington Post they did not know why the aid was being canceled or why a meeting was not being scheduled.
The decision was communicated to state and defense officials on July 18th.
Officials familiar with the meeting said, by mid-August, lawmakers were acutely aware that the Office of Management and Budget had assumed all decision-making authority from the defense and state departments and was delaying the distribution of the aid through a series of short-term notices.
Several congressional offices questioned whether the OMB had the legal authority to direct federal agencies not to spend money that Congress had already authorized.
Spokespeople for the Pentagon and State Department have declined to comment.
Mid-August is the time when a whistleblower from the intelligence community filed that complaint regarding Trump and Ukraine to the intelligence community inspector general, Michael Atkinson.
Atkinson informed the House and Senate Intelligence Committees of the complaint's existence on September 9th.
That is the same day that three House committees launched an investigation to determine whether Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, had improperly pushed Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.
So, if you're going to look at that timeline, two days after that complaint was made clear to the Congress that it existed, the aid to Ukraine was released.
So, I'm not going to blame anybody for being suspicious here.
I'm not.
I'm not.
I mean, I see why you would be suspicious.
I'm also going to say that so far the evidence is insufficient to conclude that this wasn't a generalized question of Trump not wanting to hand over aid to Ukraine, but was in fact Trump trying to hold back aid in order to motivate the Ukrainian government to go after Joe Biden.
In just a second, we're going to get to the effect of all of this, because Democrats may end up split on all of this, given the impeachment momentum and the direction in which that is moving.
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Okay, so the momentum for impeachment among the Democrats is growing and some of the some of the I would say edge Republicans are wavering.
Mitt Romney of Utah, who of course has never been a friend to President Trump, he suggested that Trump should make available the whistleblower complaint that has been deemed to be credible and urgent.
I think it'd be very helpful to get to the bottom of the facts.
If they don't, it'll be up to the House to decide how to proceed.
And frankly, I don't disagree with Mitt Romney.
I think more information is good.
I am a public citizen of the United States.
I would like more information on this phone call.
And Trump has agreed to release the transcripts.
Now, as I say, I think it's weird that the Democrats are now asking for the whistleblower complaint as opposed to the underlying phone call transcript that they are presumably worried about.
Right, I mean, it's weird.
They don't want the primary material, they want the secondary material.
You know, when you do a historical research project, there are primary materials, that'd be like the actual historical document, and then there are secondary materials, which are a summary of the historical document.
Why wouldn't you wanna see the actual historical document, namely the transcript of the phone call between Trump and Zelensky, as opposed to seeing the whistleblower complaint, which is apparently secondhand, because the whistleblower didn't even have firsthand knowledge of the call between Trump and Zelensky.
Nonetheless, Democrats are openly talking impeachment now.
According to Breitbart, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will convene the Democratic caucus at 4 p.m.
Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday to discuss whether to impeach President Donald Trump.
This is a new development reported by the Washington Post congressional correspondent Rachel Bade on Monday evening.
It comes in the wake of reports late last week that Trump encouraged Ukrainian officials to reopen inquiries into the business dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.
Now, Republicans are gonna kick back simply because they're gonna say, okay, so you're gonna impeach Trump on the basis of the information that has not yet been fully garnered, and yet you're not willing to do the same about Joe Biden.
Like, you're fully willing to dismiss all the complaints about Joe Biden, and the complaints are exactly the same, that you used your government position to withhold aid to Ukraine in benefit for, in one case, in benefit for Hunter Biden, in the other case, to investigate Hunter Biden.
So, do you guys have enough information yet is gonna be the Republican response to all of this.
But apparently they're going to meet today to talk about impeachment.
And seven freshman Democrats have now written a letter to the Washington Post openly calling for impeachment.
These representatives are Gil Cisneros of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Chrissy Houlihan of Pennsylvania, Elaine Luria of Virginia, Miki Sherrill of New Jersey, Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan, and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia.
Now, Spanberger is kind of notable because Spanberger is considered one of the more moderate Democrats.
So this means that the impeachment effort is moving mainstream inside the Democratic House Caucus.
Apparently, the current count of Democrats who are willing to countenance impeachment is up to near 160.
So they are definitely moving in that direction.
According to the Washington Post, In this letter, they say, our lives have been defined by national service.
We are not career politicians.
We are veterans of the military and of the nation's defense and intelligence agencies, which is why these seven Democrats are being now put out front.
Said our service is rooted in the defense of our country on the front lines of national security.
We have devoted our lives to the service and security of our country.
And throughout our careers, we have sworn oaths to defend the constitution of the United States many times over.
Now, we join as a unified group to uphold that oath as we enter uncharted waters and face unprecedented allegations against President Trump.
The President of the United States may have used his position to pressure a foreign country into investigating a political opponent, and he sought to use U.S.
taxpayer dollars as leverage to do it.
Well, that sentence doesn't read.
I mean, really, because it says he may have used his position and he sought to use taxpayer dollars.
So which is it?
May or he did?
I mean, so far the information suggests may have.
It does not suggest he did.
If we knew he did, Trump would be in real trouble right now.
He allegedly sought to use the very security assistance dollars appropriated by Congress to create stability in the world, to help root out corruption, and to protect our national security interests for his own personal gain.
These allegations are stunning, both in the national security threat they pose and the potential corruption they represent.
We also know that on September 9th, the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community notified Congress of a credible and urgent whistleblower complaint related to national security and potentially involving these allegations.
Despite federal law requiring the disclosure of the complaint to Congress, the administration has blocked its release to Congress.
Well, again, the question with regard to the whistleblower complaint is slightly different than the question that is being asked about the underlying material.
The whistleblower complaint, typically, under the law, has to come from the intelligence community about the intelligence community.
It can't just be the intelligence community spotting something having nothing to do with the intelligence community.
What are they whistleblowing on?
Normally, the whistleblowing... There are whistleblower protections at companies.
If you work at a company, and that company is violating the law, and you make a whistleblower complaint about a completely separate company, you are not considered a whistleblower under the law.
The same thing obtains when it comes to the intelligence community.
If you're working for the intelligence community, and you have a complaint about stuff within the intelligence community, that holds under the whistleblower law.
Not, I mean, this is the Trump administration's case, not a generalized complaint that you have about President Trump.
That'd be kind of weird.
In a second, we'll get to more of the Democrats talking impeachment and accelerating their impeachment push.
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Okay.
So we're going to get to more of impeachment talk.
Plus we have to get to the president talking with Iran and the 2020 race and the Democrats growing ever more radical.
Bernie now trying to outflank Elizabeth Warren on his wealth tax.
I mean, it's pretty wild stuff and maybe scandal for Elizabeth Warren.
We'll get into that in just a moment.
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But we are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
So as I say, seven freshman Democrats have written this letter to The Washington Post, and they continue.
They say, this flagrant disregard for the law cannot stand.
To uphold and defend our Constitution, Congress must determine whether the president was indeed willing to use his power and withhold security assistance funds to persuade a foreign country to assist him in an upcoming election.
As I say, the big defense from Trump is going to be, I released the aid and they didn't investigate Biden, so what's your problem?
So, this may come down once again, frankly, to the question of attempt.
If you looked at the second half of the Mueller report, there was a lot of attempt.
There was a lot of President Trump mouthing off to people in his administration, going, you know what, why don't you go fire Robert Mueller?
And people going, no, Mr. President, we're not doing that.
And him going, okay.
Is this sort of the same thing?
Trump threatening to withhold aid, and then the Ukrainians saying no, and then members of his administration and Congress going, you need to release the aid, and him going, okay.
Is that a crime?
Because if the quid pro quo is never pro quoed, is it a quid pro quo?
Is willingness alone enough for impeachable offense?
So there's gonna be a two-level defense for Trump, right?
One is going to be that he did not, in fact, threaten to withhold aid, right?
If that barrier is not passed, this is not an impeachable case.
If Trump said, I didn't threaten to withhold aid, I just said to him, it would be great if you could see clear to investigating Hunter Biden, and let's be real, he's corrupt.
That's Trump mouthing off.
That's bad.
It's not good for a president of the United States to do that.
I think it's immoral.
I don't think it's right.
I don't think it's impeachable.
If Trump said, I'm gonna withhold taxpayer dollars unless you go investigate my domestic political opponent, then the question becomes, did it happen or did it not?
And his attempt enough for an impeachable offense, meaning if he threatens withhold the aid and the Ukrainian said no, and then he let the aid go, which is actually what happened in terms of practicality, is that criminal?
And you know, honestly, I'll have to consider the answer to that.
I don't know the answer to that off the top of my head.
I want to look at the statute.
Is attempt enough?
Is that attempted bribery if the act is not completed?
Was it just Trump mouthing off, right, as Trump is apt to do?
Again, the second half of the Mueller report is entirely Trump mouthing off and people saying no to him and then him caving.
So this gets pretty complex and pretty sloppy.
The Democrats are going to want to investigate, obviously.
So they say, And in their effort to show passion, they are going over the top.
Here's Cory Booker saying he doesn't think that Watergate compares, which is weird since we had actual evidence of presidential criminality in Watergate and we do not yet have that of President Trump.
Here's Booker.
What do you make of the news about President Trump and his conversation with the president of Ukraine?
It is a betrayal of the office at the scale of which I haven't seen in my lifetime.
And you might have to go back to God, I don't think Watergate even compares to what this is.
Again, this is an oversell and the Democrats are overselling.
This is why, honestly, the Nancy Pelosi wing of the Democratic Party is trying to hold back the enthusiasm on the part of Democrats, because she's saying, let's just wait for the facts to catch up with where we want to go here.
That would be the smart move, just politically speaking.
OK, now shifting over to the 2020 presidential race.
The obvious beneficiary of this continues to be Elizabeth Warren.
Everybody is talking about Biden and Ukraine.
Everybody's talking about Trump and Ukraine.
And Elizabeth Warren is just sitting over to the side, soaking up the glorious media attention.
There's a new tracking poll in California, and it shows Elizabeth Warren opening up a wide lead.
Now, It is a small sample size, like 600 people, and it's a survey.
It's a monthly tracking poll for Capitol Weekly, and it shows Elizabeth Warren increasing her share of the vote, pushing VP Joe Biden down to third place among likely voters.
It has her up at 29%, Sanders at 21%, and Biden at 18%.
Again, there are these leading candidates.
Kamala Harris is really dropping.
A lot of her support is shifting over to Elizabeth Warren.
If Elizabeth Warren wins California, this primary season is over.
This primary season is over.
So again, this is kind of a stunning move by Elizabeth Warren.
There is a scandal that may be brewing for Elizabeth Warren that is not receiving the sort of attention it should.
And that scandal has been revealed courtesy of a group of left-wing journalists.
There's one, there's a field journalist at a place called Status Coup, which I've never heard of before.
But he reveals that there's a think tank called Demos.
And they gave the Working Families Party $45,000 in 27-2018.
And the Working Families Party just shocked the world.
They'd endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016, and they came out and they endorsed Elizabeth Warren moving forward to 2020.
And they said that our voting breakdown was 60-40 in favor of Elizabeth Warren.
There's only one problem.
The way that that Working Families Party internal vote goes, half is from the leadership, half is from the populace.
And they have not revealed the breakdown of that.
Why does that matter?
Well, because Demos, which gave 45 grand to the Working Families Party in 2017-2018, is led by?
Amelia, okay?
Amelia Warren Tiagi, who is Elizabeth Warren's daughter.
So in other words, what that looks like is Elizabeth Warren's, like, all these politicians and their kids, man.
Elizabeth Warren's kid, chairwoman of Demos, right?
Demos gave 45 grand to the Working Families Party.
That was the first year that Demos had ever given anything to the Working Families Party.
And within one year, the Working Families Party had shifted its support from Bernie Sanders to Elizabeth Warren.
Dave Weigel of the Washington Post says, the Working Families Party endorsement of Warren is not surprisingly irritating some Sanders supporters.
Warren's 60.9% win combined two totals, a vote by the leaders and an online member vote.
Each of those counted for 50% of total, but the Working Families Party won't release the separate tallies, which suggests, of course, that the people voted in favor of Bernie Sanders and the leaders were like, you know what we like?
This sweet, sweet cash coming from Elizabeth Warren's daughter.
So again, is this a case of smoke but no fire?
Or is this a case of smoke and fire?
Like, the appearances of conflict, as I say, in politics, are everywhere.
Because if you're looking for appearances of conflict, it is not hard to find them, particularly when you have your kids in the political realm.
For what it's worth, in 2015, the Working Families Party did reveal the results of the online membership survey, and it was 87% for Bernie Sanders.
Whigle says, I talked to the WFP's national director Maurice Mitchell earlier.
He made clear the group will not release separate vote totals.
For there to be one true vote and to maintain the nature of the secret ballot, all of that went into the back end.
Which is pretty incredible.
Which is pretty incredible.
So Elizabeth Warren, this has not received any of the sort of media coverage that it should be receiving because the media are too busy massaging Elizabeth Warren's presidential hopes.
But that is a pretty bad story for Elizabeth Warren.
If her daughter looks like she was bribing the Working Families Party to support mom, And the Working Families Party won't reveal the internal vote totals.
That is a bad story for Elizabeth Warren, and could in fact harm her.
I think you will see Bernie Sanders make a case out of this.
Bernie is starting to open up his guns, as I suggested he would have to, on Elizabeth Warren.
Earlier today, he proposed a super wealth tax, not just a wealthy tax, a super wealth tax, in which he would reduce the ability of billionaires to be billionaires.
He literally tweeted out, Billionaires should not exist.
Perhaps we should put them on trains to very cold places.
You know, like Montana or something.
And we will build... We won't call them gulags, but they will be kind of like gulags.
And we'll put them there.
And then they won't be billionaires anymore.
And we'll liquidate the gulags.
And we will unite the workers of the world.
Bernie Sanders really going for it.
He tweeted out, There is no justice when three billionaires are able to own more wealth than the bottom half of the entire country.
Well, no, there might be justice, depending on whether they also employ hundreds of thousands of Americans, made millions of lives better with their products, and engaged in voluntary exchange.
So his new plan, Bernie Sanders, he's gonna go for the super-duper wealth tax!
And you knew this was coming, right?
Elizabeth Warren proposed her 2% wealth tax, which is unconstitutional and would not raise anywhere near the kind of money she's talking about, because you know what wealthy people are very good at?
Tax avoidance.
Very, very good at it.
In fact, it's one of the reasons why you see Democrats say stuff like, well, you remember back in the 1960s when the top tax bracket was 91%?
Right, and the effective tax rate on rich people was pretty much the same because rich people started taking their money and putting it in places that were not taxable.
The tax revenue of the federal government versus the GDP of the United States has basically remained stable since the reduction of war spending after World War II.
So that has not really changed.
But Bernie Sanders is proposing a new wealth tax.
A 1% tax on net worth over $32 million every year.
2% from $50 million to $250 million.
3% from $250 million to $500 million.
4% from $500 million to $1 billion.
And 8% on wealth over $10 billion.
He says this will raise $4.35 trillion per decade.
And then he says this would be used to fund Bernie's affordable housing plan, universal child care, and the top fund, Medicare for All.
I mean, that is sort of a problem considering that Medicare for All is supposed to cost something like $34 trillion, so if he raises $4.35 trillion over the next decade, I'm not sure where the other $30 trillion is going to come from, but this is Bernie Sanders upping the ante.
And also, Bernie Sanders is more of a true believer than Elizabeth Warren, and you're going to see him make that case.
Just in the last 24 hours, Bernie Sanders is drawing the contrast between Elizabeth Warren and her supposed warm embrace of capitalism and his own love for socialism.
Here's Bernie saying that people are brainwashed to believe in capitalism.
Someone says this to him, and of course, he fully agrees.
Even though I have a lake house and I love pudding.
Many types of pudding.
Pudding is delicious.
I think that the kind of brainwashing or the idea, at least like I grew up with, is that our definition of success is like the American dream in great capitalism.
You're rewarded for getting everything and just keeping it to yourself and not worrying about everybody else.
And that's sort of like a psychology that we've all been taught.
I think Lizzie is exactly right.
That's a profound, it's a profound point.
Oh, it's super profound to believe that capitalism is good.
People have been brainwashed to believe that capitalism is good by, you know, the immense prosperity that capitalism has created.
But if we get rid of capitalism, everything's like... I don't know how he claims that he is in favor of, quote-unquote, democratic socialism, Norway, Finland, Sweden style, when he is ripping on capitalism, which provides the entire growth basis for the Nordic countries, as every politician in Norway and Sweden and Finland will tell you openly.
But Bernie is trying to draw a contrast with Elizabeth Warren.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to sort of stumble around.
Yesterday, he was asked by a reporter to make the case for his presidency, and he basically said, no, I'm not going to do it.
Iowa, the unemployment rate is two and a half percent.
People say they are employed in Iowa and their small businesses are growing.
They were employed before he got elected.
The president won by 10 percentage points in Iowa.
I guess he didn't win by 10 percentage points.
What I'm suggesting is he's not the reason for the unemployment rate being down.
But why should people want to make a change, though?
Well, that's up to them to decide.
Why should they?
It's for them to decide.
We'll make your case.
I'm not going to.
I'm not going to make my case.
Well, you know, you might want to at some point.
And Biden's problem is that he's having the so-called Teddy Kennedy problem from 1980.
Teddy Kennedy was famously asked in an interview in 1980 when he was running against Jimmy Carter, whether, in fact, he had a reason for wanting to be president and he had no answer.
And Biden has that same feel about him.
So you've got Elizabeth Warren on the far left, and Joe Biden stumbling around somewhere in the middle slash left.
And then you've got Elizabeth Warren, who, again, continues to receive glowing media coverage.
And the media are ignoring anything that smacks of corruption for her.
Okay, meanwhile, there's a lot of hubbub over at the UN over climate change.
And there's a girl named Greta Thunberg who is, I will say, a very effective emotional spokesperson for the climate change effort.
And she was very emotional over at the UN.
She's not the only one, by the way.
There are a bunch of these kids who have been trotted out by the far left.
In order to make the climate change case, she's gotten an enormous number of headlines because she's been involved in a huge organizational effort over in Europe to get people into the streets, and here is what it sounded like.
You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.
Entire ecosystems are collapsing.
We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.
And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.
How dare you?
Okay, now, honestly, I feel bad for her because obviously she believes what she is saying.
And there are other kids who are out there saying things like, we're all going to die.
We're all gonna, this is gonna be the last generation.
I'm not going to blame these kids.
These kids are enthusiastic.
That's fine.
I am going to blame people on the left who specifically hide behind children in order to avoid solutions talk.
So there's a friend of mine, I'm not going to name check for his own job security, over at Wharton Business School, and he tweeted a few weeks back that if you actually want to do something, you have to lead with solutions.
If you're just talking about problems, that's called complaining.
Well, I'm not going to blame kids for complaining because that's what kids do, right?
You wouldn't expect a teenager to have a solution because teenagers don't have solutions.
What I would expect is for politicians and folks on the left who pretend to be serious about these issues to actually provide the solutions.
But this is specifically why they are trotting out kids like Greta Thunberg.
The reason they are using those kids as the spokespeople for their cause is because no one expects children, no one expects teenagers to provide solutions They would expect politicians to provide solutions because if you saw Barack Obama say something like that, if he said, how dare you?
If he said, how dare you?
Why is it?
Why can't we just all get together?
Then we would all say, okay, what's your solution?
You got an answer?
And he'd say, nope.
And we'd be like, okay, well, then you're full of it.
But if a kid does it, we're like, well, that's passionate.
That means something.
So politicians are using these kids and they're hiding behind these kids to avoid talk about solutions.
Why?
Because it turns out solutions when it comes to climate change are in short supply and are incredibly difficult.
They're very, very hard.
And nobody, even on the environmentalist left, wants to talk about that.
Instead, they want to throw out this pie-in-the-sky garbage like the Green New Deal, which provides no solutions, by the way.
And then they want to say, if you oppose those solutions, it's because you're not passionate enough.
It's the same thing the left will do about gun control.
We don't actually have solutions tailored to the problem, but we're going to put out a bunch of kids who can talk about the problem.
And then, if you say that the kids have no solutions, it's because you're targeting children.
This is the goal of people on the left.
Put forward the kids as political shields for their own inability to come up with a solution.
At the same time that Greta Thunberg is out there pushing on climate change and saying that continuous economic growth is a myth and all this.
It's not a myth, by the way.
We've had continuous economic growth in the West since 1800.
Like really exponential, by the way.
Put that aside.
At the same time that all of these kids are being trotted out and cheered by the media and Barack Obama going on Twitter and talking about, look at the courage of these children.
Aren't they courageous?
Isn't that great?
They deserve action.
And you're like, okay, what action?
I don't know, but they deserve action.
At the same time that's happening, report from the New York Times.
The UN Climate Action Summit on Monday was meant to highlight concrete promises by presidents, prime ministers, and corporate executives to wean the global economy from fossil fuels to avoid the worst effects of global warming.
But despite the protests in the streets, China on Monday made no new promises to take stronger climate action.
No, you mean that giant protests in the West are not going to affect Xi Jinping?
I mean, for God's sake, he was threatening to roll tanks over people in Hong Kong.
So you think that he cares what Greta Thunberg has to say?
Of course not.
And the media know this.
The lead emitter on planet Earth is China.
It is not close.
The second emitter is India.
Hey, those countries are not going to change their policies because a bunch of school children in the West are protesting in the streets without any actual solutions to the problems.
Which is why I suggest that all of this is a disingenuous effort by people who do not have solutions to the problem in order to politically polarize.
And that does break the system because if the suggestion is That if only we had sufficient willingness, we could come to a solution.
And then you provide no solutions?
You're putting strain on a system that is not capable of carrying it.
And then people lose faith in the system.
It is an anti-democratic point of view to suggest that complaining is in and of itself a solution, and then you don't have to provide solutions, and no solution is put forth, and people get more passionate and more upset, and the system can't do it.
You're putting strains on a system because you are too lazy and too stupid, and I'm not talking about any of these kids.
I'm talking about the politicians who are using these kids, and members of the media who are using these kids.
You are too lazy, or too disingenuous, or too stupid to come up with solutions.
And so instead, you try out a bunch of kids who are not expected to have solutions, so that you can have them complain about the problem, and then if anybody points out that nobody's providing a solution, like, well, those are kids.
Why would you expect them to have solutions?
I don't.
I expect you to have solutions, and I expect you to stop with the political manipulation in which you are engaged, because it is gross and very, very bad for the system.
Okay.
Time for a quick thing that I like and then a thing that I hate.
So, things that I like today.
So there is an older series that is really quite excellent called The Killing.
This is on AMC.
It's now actually available on Netflix.
I think originally it aired on AMC.
And the series is kind of a slow burn.
It's kind of slow moving.
And there's one particular performance in this series that is really first rate.
I'm trying to remember the name of the actor.
Here's a little bit of the trailer, and I'll look up the name of the actor in the meantime.
Who are you?
I'm Holden from county.
Are you Linda?
Yeah, I'm Linda.
School kids on a field trip this morning found this.
You don't have a history of running away, Mrs. Larson?
Rosie?
No.
Okay, so the series opens with the death of a teenager and then the entire first season about investigation of that death.
What makes the series a little bit different is there's a lot of focus on the immediate family and the aftermath of the killing.
So it's actually quite disturbing in that way.
The performance of Joel Kinnaman in this... Joel Kinnaman plays Holder, who's sort of the sidekick to the main character, Morel Enos.
I'm not sure how her name is pronounced.
And Kinnaman is just terrific.
He plays the father in Hannah, which I've also recommended.
He's also in Altered Carbon, which is a really interesting series.
And he is really excellent.
I mean, he can really inhabit a part.
If I had not known that he was in those other series, I wouldn't have known that he was in those other series.
There's been some talk about Kinnaman as a potential James Bond in the future.
When you watch this, or you watch Altered Carbon, You start to see why people are talking that way.
So you can check out The Killing.
I think there are four seasons that are available on Netflix, and it's worth the watch.
It's pretty interesting.
Time for a quick thing that I hate.
Okay, so when people suggest that maybe the left-leaning media wishes to tear down our social institutions, it's because of pieces like this.
The New York Times Magazine has a piece by Malia Wallin called How to Propose an Open Relationship.
Now, the answer to this is don't.
Right, the answer is don't.
Because, as it turns out, open relationships, as a general rule, are not good for people.
Monogamy is good for you.
It makes you a better person.
It urges you to control the drives that are not supposed to overpower you.
It urges you to view people as people and not as sex objects.
Monogamy is an inherent good.
I don't know why that has become a controversial proposition, but I will stick to it anyway.
Monogamy is an inherent good.
There's something good about monogamy.
But the New York Times is going to recommend how you can broach the subject of an open relationship with your spouse.
By the way, 95% of people who do this will be men.
Because as it turns out, men are much more interested in open relationships than women, as a general rule.
Terry Conley, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan who studies sexuality says, don't bring it up during an argument.
Yeah, you think?
You're arguing with your spouse, you're like, you know what?
Let's just go F other people, man.
That's not gonna go well.
If you're in a monogamous relationship and want to explore making it non-monogamous, raise the topic gradually.
As a general rule, by the way, topics you have to raise gradually with your spouse are probably topics you shouldn't be broaching.
Really, if you have to raise a topic gradually with your spouse, it's a pretty good indicator, and you can't have an open conversation about it, pretty good indicator that this may not be a topic that is worthy of consideration.
Conley says, start hypothetically.
For example, ask your partner to name the most attractive famous people.
You could then say, oh, that person is so hot.
If they propositioned you, I'd be fine if you had sex with them.
If your partner looks horrified at the suggestion, it doesn't bode well.
Well, maybe you should have figured this stuff out before you got in a relationship.
I know, I know, suggesting that you might want to base a relationship on values before you get in a relationship with somebody is heresy.
Instead, what you're supposed to do is reverse the order of things.
So, it's so funny.
You watch the old sitcoms, and the usual order of things is you fall in love with somebody, you marry them, and then you go to bed with them.
And now, the order of things in every sitcom and every TV show ever is you go to bed with them, maybe you fall in love with them, and then, after 10 years, you marry them.
And then we're surprised that relationships aren't working as well, because as it turns out, you know what's the easiest part of a relationship?
Having sex with somebody.
That part's super easy, because sex is a biological imperative.
You know what's the hardest part?
The actual relationship part.
So if you start with that, maybe your relationship will be better.
But the New York Times Magazine is going to help you make the case to your spouse that you should be able to screw other people.
Once you decide to make your case outright, be explicit about what you want.
Say it clearly.
Listen carefully to what your partner wants.
To make what sex researchers call consensual, extra dyadic involvement work, you need to be willing to communicate often and with empathy.
Monogamous couples move into non-monogamy for all kinds of reasons.
Unmet sexual desire, boredom, illness, curiosity.
Open arrangements tend to work best for couples with lower inclinations toward jealousy and, in the case of heterosexual pairs, less rigid gender norms.
Yeah, shocker.
Just the suggestion of romantic permutation can be stimulating.
Thank you, New York Times Magazine.
You're definitely, you're definitely making things better.
If both parties appear willing to try an open relationship, give yourself a trial period.
I'm so glad that the New York Times has turned into Cosmo.
Cosmo circa 1993.
Good job, New York Times.
Journalism-ing of the highest order.
Okay, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content and all the updates on Ukraine, I-crane, we all crane for Ukraine.
We'll have all of those updates a little bit later, so that's why you should subscribe.
If not, we'll see you here tomorrow.
I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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